Empower Play Hilary Knight seizes the leadership role of role model for women's hockey.

   If you think it’s an improbably road to become an Olympian, consider Hilary Knight’s journey. Born in San Francisco, her family moved to Chicago when she was young because of her dad’s job. Her mom, looking for a way to get the kids out of the house to meet other kids was told by her tennis-playing friend that maybe the kids should try ice skating. “Once I started skating,” Knight recalls, “I saw kids playing hockey, and that was it. I jumper over the other side of the boards.”
   Knight knew she wanted to be an Olympian. But she wasn’t sure how. “I told my grandmother when I was five that I was going to be in the Olympics,” she says. “I had just started playing hockey, but I didn’t even know there was a women’s team. Maybe I thought I could play on the men’s team,” she says laughing.
   But for Knight, hockey was a male-dominated game in which she needed to earn her ice time at every level. “My dad always teases me about breaking the ‘ice ceiling’ in hockey, but I did face a lot of adversity.”
   Most often, Knight was the only female on the all-boys teams. “Parents would complain all the time about it,” she remembers. “They would say, ‘It’s not fair. She’s taking ice time away from my son.’” The locker room also could be difficult at times. “You didn’t have a lot of camaraderie with teammates,” Knight says. “You weren’t allowed in the locker room all the time, nor would you want to be. There were a lot of times that I got dressed in the lobby.”
   It wasn’t until high school that Knight felt like Olympic hockey, the pinnacle of the women’s sport, was in her grasp. “I remember thinking that I felt I could be good enough to make it. How do I get to the tryouts? Then you realize that you have to get invited. So you sit and wait and hope that someone notices that you might be good enough.”
   After a year of waiting, Knight got the call. At age 17, she was competing with Team USA. And by the time she was 20, 15 years after telling her grandmother that she would be an Olympian, Knight skated onto the ice in Vancouver to represent Team USA. “I was starry eyed. I couldn’t sleep for the whole Olympics, because I wanted to take it all in.”
   Knight was part of the silver medal team in Vancouver. In 2014, she returned to the Olympics in Sochi and helped lead the team to another silver medal finish. “The gold medal is still looming out there as a goal,” she says.
   But there is still plenty to do until then. Knight’s participation in the Always #likeagirl advertising campaign received huge feedback from young female hockey players around the world. “I really wanted to be part of the campaign,” she says. “Our values were aligned for it. It means a lot to me to help empower girls and women worldwide.”
   Always the role model, Knight recently suited up and skated with the Anaheim Ducks team to support USA Hockey’s “Girls Try Hockey for Free Day.” The day was created to provide opportunities to young girls around the country to try the sport of hockey. “It was an amazing day for me,” Knight says. “To be able to skate with some of the best players in the world and showcase your own skill level, it was an incredible opportunity. I welcomed the chance to continue to push the boundaries for women in hockey. Girls need to have role models.”
   It wasn’t long ago that Knight looked to her own role model for inspiration. “For me,” she says, “my image of women’s hockey growing up was Cammi Granato. That’s why I wear number 21. I want to take on that role model responsibility. When you are on the world stage and at the pinnacle of the sport, we have a responsibility to inspire the youth. If there’s something they really want to do, they should be able to do it.”
   Knight has had to sit out the last six weeks with a broken foot. But now that she’s cleared to play, she’s jumping right into the rink of fire. Tonight, she joins her pro team, the Boston Blades, as they compete for the Clarkson Cup, women’s pro hockey equivalent of the Stanley Cup. From there, she will head to train with Team USA, as they get ready for the World Championships later this month in Sweden.
   But is she ready to play again at an elite level after sitting out for so long? “To be honest, it’s harder to sit out more than anything else,” she says. “In your career, you only have so many games, so many practices. It’s such a finite amount of chances. Every game, every practice that you miss is a lost opportunity to play. When my career is over, I’ll be begging for one more chance to play, so I’m going to enjoy every moment of it while I can.”